The Garbage, She Overflows

As you may (or probably not) know, Toronto city workers are on strike. That means public pools and daycares are closed. As are the city archives, city golf courses, and city-run museums and art galleries (not the ROM and AGO though), and a whole lot more. Worst of all, there is no garbage collection. (Except out here in Etobicoke, where residential garbage pickup is contracted out. And yes, I live in another city, but it is still part of Toronto. Don’t ask me to explain amalgamation. I don’t understand it myself.) So, we have a situation where we have a lovely scene like this:

a block and a half away from a scene like this:

Disgusting, isn’t it? Thankfully the weather has been unseasonably cool, so it only smells bad rather then stinks. But, with the temperature set to jump this weekend, I can only imagine how awful it is going to be.

Now, the city was trying to be smart about the garbage sitution at the start of the strike. Below is a picture taken by Danielle Scott from the Toronto Strike Flickr stream.

The sign reads “Temporarily out of service. Please do not litter.” Guess how long they lasted?

I’m not going to vent about the strike or share my feelings about union/management negotiations. All I will say is that everyone who has a job right now should be thankful. And I’m thankful that the smelly garbage situation gives me an excuse to stay inside and stitch.

One of our councils (local govt) here in Adelaide recently tried to implement refuse collection once a fortnight. Our recycle and green waste (lawn clippings, prunings etc) is fortnightly, but imagine the smell of food scraps etc after two weeks of 45c heat. Thankfully, someone (state govt) with common sense over-rode that decision.

Our garb collection has long been privatised, but seems to work quite well. That is, until some bozo on a cost-cutting exercise decides that he can reduce costs paid to private orgs by only paying for collection fortnightly.

Another one of those, ‘what were they thinking? Or that’s right, they weren’t!)